


to run with dæmons

by hellbeast



Series: broken string [4]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Barely Canon Compliant, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-20
Updated: 2014-01-20
Packaged: 2018-01-09 10:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellbeast/pseuds/hellbeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When John finally makes it out of the house – staggering out the burning skeleton that used to be home, just as the firemen are preparing to surge in – Caroline isn’t there, trotting beside him.</p><p>That, more than anything, lets Dean know that everything has changed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to run with dæmons

**Author's Note:**

> a spn/hdm crossover because it's such an easy trap to fall into

The one clear memory Dean has of Mary Winchester is of her death.

He is running down the hallway, and Sammy is heavy in his arms. He’s just big enough to be carrying his little brother—his knees almost bang into Sammy’s tiny feet as he tried to run as fast as he can—but Dad had said to run, so Dean was running. Zizou, scrabbling for purchase with the oversized paws of a husky pup, is but a hair’s breadth behind them, pulling up the rear and carrying Nikita’s small kitten body as best he can by the scruff. The upstairs is on fire and there’s smoke everywhere, and Dean nearly stops running because he can’t breathe and he can’t see and he wants his mom.

But Zizou lets out a strained cry around the bunches of Nikita’s fur in his mouth, and Dean keeps running.

Leading them out of the house is Juris, his mother’s dæmon. Juris is a beautiful lion, sleek and white, with an impossibly huge mane. Dean thinks he gives the best hugs ever, and knows the best bedtime stories. Now, Juris is running, his face bunched up in pain because Mom is all the way back up in the nursery. Dad and his dæmon, a bull dog named Caroline, are up in the nursery, too. If Dean listens hard enough, he can hear them yelling.

Juris roars—a loud, trembling thing that shakes the windows within their panes—and Dean nearly drops Sam in fright and relief, because the front door is right there.

The hulking form of Juris suddenly falls back a pace, but Dean and Zizou keep running until they burst across the threshold; Zizou and Dean collapsing first, Nikita and Sam on top of them, all four little chests heaving. The fire is still raging, and Dean hasn’t seen Dad or Caroline since this whole thing began, and Sam starts to cry and Dean can’t take it. But before that—before he can cry, before he can do _anything_ —

Juris bellows, a deep sound of such pain, and bursts into cinders and ash.

Dean screams.

* * *

When John finally makes it out of the house—staggering out the burning skeleton that used to be home, just as the firemen are preparing to surge in—Caroline isn’t there, trotting beside him.

That, more than anything, lets Dean know that everything has changed.

* * *

They move around a lot after Mary’s gone. John is paranoid and determined—about what, Dean hasn’t got a clue—but he drives them all around in the Impala and then holes them up in some hotel room and takes off for days.

Zizou hates it when John does that, but Dean just listens to all of John’s instructions and says ‘Yes, sir’ when prompted. Sam starts to cry, the first time John leaves them by themselves, and Nikita turns into a whining puppy. Zizou snarls at the door—at John’s absence—and then becomes a huge tiger and folds up onto the floor, dragging Sam and Nikita closer with his huge head. Dean deadbolts the door like John taught him (he has to drag a chair over to reach) and then goes to join them.

* * *

The thing is, after a while, Zizou doesn’t talk much.

Nikita rambles on like there’s a quota on words that needs to be filled, but Zizou becomes selective about who he talks in front of. Before Mary and Juris died, he’d babbled on like any kid’s dæmon. But after, he hardly said more than a few sentences a day and after a while he nearly stopped altogether.

He still talks to Dean, of course, snide comments and mumbled conversations in the dead of night, and to Sam, but that stops, too. Zizou starts to rely more and more on thick, bestial noises and casual flicks of his ears imbued with meaning whenever Sam or John addresses him. He still laughs, still cries, and is still the same breed of older brother that Dean is, but no matter how persistently Nikita pulls at his ears, he just rumbles low in his throat, sadly.

* * *

Dean doesn’t think much of how… different they—he and Sam and Dad—are until he’s ten, and they’ve settled down in Virginia for a hunt.

Dad enrolls them in a local school, turning a deaf ear to Dean’s petulant objection.

The first day, when Dean walks into the classroom, Zizou no less than an inch away, the entire class falls silent.

It takes him a moment, to realize why.

Zizou is big. Too big.

All of the other kids have small dæmons, or dæmons awkwardly growing into their bodies, with oversized paws and lanky limbs. Zizou, with his glowing white fur and shining green eyes, is fully grown and more; sleek and muscled and powerful, nearly the size of an adolescent horse.

The kids are trying to peer around Dean, trying to find the adult that the monstrous beast _has_ to belong to.

Dean’s never really thought about it, but Zizou’s always been big. He’d been a little bigger than usual as a cub, and barely a year after Mary’s death, he’d been enormous, big enough to hide Dean and Sam and Nikita and then some.

Dean’s growing enough on his own, but Zizou’s been growing twice as fast for all four of them.

* * *

“C’mon, ZZ, please?” Dean begs, using Zizou’s nickname from before Mary died. He knows it’ll work, and Zizou knows it too.

“I don’t like this,” Zizou grumbles, but he begins to stretch his limbs in the way dæmons do before they shift.

“It’s only for when we’re out,” Dean promises, “Dad don’t want us to stick out too badly.”

Zizou snarls something unsavory about _where_ exactly John Winchester can stick his wants, but he shifts nonetheless.

* * *

They’re in Colorado for a month while Dad works to take down a chain of witches, who may or may not be in league with lesser pagan deities. He enrolls them in a local elementary school, much to Sam’s delight and Dean’s reluctance.

Zizou tries to stay in the form of an awkward wolf cub, with too big paws and long, gangly limbs. Every time Sam and Nikita see them, Nikita gives a loud crow-cackle, prompting a warning growl.

“I hate this,” Zizou says for the millionth time, as John herds towards the wide doors of the school building.

“I know,” Dean says, unfamiliar with how he has to reach down, and not up, to touch Zizou’s nape in comfort. He’s only twelve, but he’s so used to Zizou’s haunches nearly outstripping him in height, “But it’s only for a little while.”

“ZZ’s _tiny_ ,” Nikita jeers, swooping down from Sam’s shoulder on blackbird wings and morphing smoothly into a fox, jumping to nip at Zizou’s flattened ears.

Zizou bares his teeth, and swats at her in annoyance, but when Nikita slides out of the way and becomes a weasel, to Dean’s surprise, Zizou follows, shedding wolf’s fur for the quick stride of a bobcat. Nikita chitters gleefully, leading Zizou on a merry chase down the sidewalk, with Sam and Dean at their heels. Zizou hasn’t shifted so willingly since Dean was four.

Dean can feel Zizou’s latent discomfort melt into genuine joy and fun for the first time in ages, and they let out identical whoops as Zizou leaps at Nikita and pins the smaller dæmon under the bulk of a wolverine.

“Dean!” Sam shrieks, slamming into him with the careless naiveté that Dean hadn’t had for too long. They go tumbling over each other, other students and teachers regarding them fondly as they pass across the school grounds. Dean flips Sam over, and begins to tickle, grinning so broadly that it hurts when Sam begins to kick and giggle uncontrollably.

“ZZ’s too slow!” Nikita sings, having squirreled her way from under Zizou’s paws. Zizou slides confidently into weasel fur, and then after a moment of consideration, the coarse fur of a bear cub before giving chase.

“ _ **Boys!**_ ” John’s quick reprimand stops everything. Dean has Sam in a headlock and Nikita is barely hanging onto Zizou’s snout with her tiny paws. The yard has cleared.

“Sorry Dad,” Dean is the first to apologize, nudging Sam, who lets out an insincere apology without looking John in the eye. Zizou dips his head and Nikita slinks off and darts under Sam’s shirt.

John sighs, and runs a hand through his hair.

“Come on,” he instructs, voice softer, herding them through the doors and towards the office, “We gotta get your room assignments.”

* * *

Dean gets sorted into one of the sixth grade classes, and Sam gets bumped up into the third grade, and given a more intensive curriculum.

Dean hates the whole thing, would rather be out hunting with Dad, but Sam takes to it like a fish to water. Dean barely avoids fights, and stays in during recess talking to his teacher about Vonnegut and his favorite bands, and Sam starts preparing for things like science and history fairs.

John scopes out the town, takes down witness accounts and stocks up on food and supplies while he can. He shuts down Dean’s every attempt to join the hunt, citing age as his main reason, and Sammy’s safety as his infallible backup.

Dean sulks and scowls, but keeps going to school. Sam makes friends.

John finds the witches and nearly gets himself voodoo’d to hell. Dean and Zizou—against orders, John will later attempt to reprimand—make sense of the notes left scattered throughout the hotel room and mangage to charge in at the last second, Zizou back to his usual enormous tiger self, making quick work of the witches’ dæmons. Dean flips over altars and pumps the witches full of rock salt, disorienting them long enough for John to recover himself.

Dean helps John to his feet, with some difficultly.

“No more hiding,” Zizou tells the man flatly, vocal where Dean doesn’t allow himself to be (the irony, he'll think later). When John reaches out to settle mussed fur, the tiger snarls and ducks away, “No more schools. Not unless we’re staying; it isn’t fair to Sammy.”

Without waiting for John’s defensive reply, because he’s sure to have one, the tiger pushes the flat of his head to Dean's back and herds him away.

* * *

After that, Zizou sticks to three forms. Whenever they’re on the road or on a hunt (which is always) he’s either a wild dog, all chilling laugh and wicked grin, or a regal lion; the colour of fresh snow, the colour of Juris, all muscle and strength. Mostly though, he’s a white tiger; huge and powerful, with a protective streak wider than the day is long.

Dean knows it’s weird; most dæmons go through forms endlessly and favour the one they’ll likely settle as, but Zizou’s got his pick of forms that provide the strength and ferocity a hunter needs, but the dependence and pack-mentality that Dean knows he has.

Nikita is still going through that awkward and curious phases; one minute she’s a skittering fox and the next a trumpeting elephant. She can’t seem to decide whether or not she wants to be small enough to perch on Sam, or big enough to intimidate for him. When Sam hits puberty and starts to shoot up like a rather persistent weed, Nikita becomes a gangly moose, and stays that way for a while. Dean laughs every time he sees them, and Sam scowls and bitches at him, but his voice always cracks halfway through and when he does Nikita turns into a squeaking rat, and that just makes Dean laugh harder.

John drinks.

Dean’s never gathered the courage to ask what had happened to Caroline. He’s never seen anyone alive without a dæmon, but sometimes Dean feels like John isn’t even alive—isn’t really there—and he realizes that he doesn’t really want to know.

* * *

The older than Sam gets, the more he starts to talk back. With Dean, it’s mostly regular stupid little kid stuff; he wants something else to eat, he wants to play in the park, he doesn’t want to move again because he has friends. Every time Sam tries to make one of these arguments, Nikita turns into a chattering little monkey, perched on Sam’s shoulder, and shaking her fists at Dean for emphasis. Zizou always finds a humour in this and tries to shove Nikita off of Sam’s shoulder with a huge paw.

It’s a whole different ball game with John.

Every word Sam has to say to their father is bitten off, and angry, despite the fact that Sam’s way too young to even know about that kind of rage, let alone experience it. Most times, John ignores it, because Sam is still a little kid. But when Sam hits twelve and decides he won’t take bullshit from John anymore, things go from worse to absolute shitstorm.

It hurts to see them argue, and it always exudes a feeling of abnormality. Sam, tall and only going up, screaming and snarling at John, who lashes out quick and sure. Nikita at Sam’s side, always something big and ferocious.

Dean always has to clean up the pieces afterwards.

He talks Sam—who is always red in the face, and angry at everything—down. He finds John—usually in his part of the room, or out by the Impala—doing his best to become shitfaced, and hoards most of the beer cans and hides them. Zizou is shadowing his steps every moment, tiger face narrow and saddened.

* * *

When Zizou settles, Dean thinks it’s the worst day of his life.

(He’s wrong, of course, because there are more days to come that will be far worse)

He’s barely hit 16 when it happens.

John has given up on getting Dean to go to school, so every afternoon, Dean tucks a knife in his waistband, and goes to pick Sam up.

On the day Zizou settles, Dean gets to the school and the first thing he sees is Nikita being held down by some straggly looking mutt. Zizou, shifting seamlessly, has one huge bear paw swinging at the dog’s face with a roar before the three bullies even notice that Dean is there.

The dog yelps as it’s sent head over paws, violently flung away from Nikita. Dean’s got the biggest kid’s shirt in his fists before the other two can react, and Zizou is easily intimidating their dog dæmons.

Sam picks himself up off the ground, and sends Dean a shaky smile. Nikita, a fennec fox, bounds to his side, and they cling to each other in silence. Zizou gives one last ferocious snarl before lumbering over to Sam. Dean drops the kid, and shoves him back into his two goons. There’s rage in his veins, but these are just fucking kids, and if he gets Sam expelled, he’ll never hear the end of it. From Sam or John.

“C’mon Sammy,” he says, and Sam picks up Nikita, hugs her to his chest and sets a fast pace for the schoolyard gates. He doesn’t even try to tell Dean off for calling him Sammy, and it’s such a little thing, but Dean nearly goes back to the bullies and let’s them have it. Zizou makes the choice for them both, slimming back down into a tiger and dogging Sam’s heels, nearly tripping him with every other step, forcing Dean to pull up the rear.

He’s getting too old for this shit.

He should’ve seen it coming. He’s barely past the gate when a weight hits him from behind, heavy, and two sets of fangs dig into the backs of his calves. Another set buries itself into his left thigh. He screams and curses when he goes down.

“Dean!” Sam is screaming, and Zizou lets out a snarl of pain, before charging.

The three dog dæmons are as vicious as they dare be, gripping the flesh of his legs and shaking and pulling, and goddamnit, Dean _hates_ dogs. They scatter when Zizou comes barreling towards them, but Zizou only has eyes for the human boys cackling some 30 feet back.

“Zizou, no!” Dean groans into the concrete, clutching at his bloodied legs, but it’s half-hearted at best.

Slick fangs close around an arm, a leg and then a neck, and the dog dæmons yelp and whine and thrash on the ground, sparks of gold ash shooting from their fur. Other children and their dæmons on the playground and milling about begin to scream, the noise clashing terribly with the earthshaking snarls of Dean’s dæmon.

The leader’s mutt screams, its jaw stretched in agony, as its human is thoroughly shaken in Zizou’s jaws. The boy gurgles on his own blood, and his dæmon collapses, sending up a flurry of gold dust. Nikita pitches a high whine in the back of her throat, and Zizou tosses the boy’s body with one final snarl. Sam throws up.

Zizou’s killed before—has been killing, since Dean was 13—but fuck, Dean would give anything for this to go some other way.

An adult, probably a teacher or a faculty member, comes dashing out the doors, pale in the face with horror. Her whippet dæmon begins to whisper at Zizou, so low that Dean can’t hear. But he can feel Zizou, as always, he can feel the discomfort, taste the blood on fangs. More teachers come running out, their dæmons doing their best not to startle Zizou, who is flicking his tail angrily, eyes cold.

He’s expecting another attack, Dean realizes. They both are.

John is gonna ream his ass for this one, no doubt.

Dean tightens his fingers through the slick of his own blood, lets his forehead rest on the rough concrete, and curses.

“Fuck.”

* * *

Charges aren’t pressed, as much as some boisterous mustached man wants to; presumably the dad of one of the little shits.

An EMT stitches up Dean’s legs as best he can—Dean's definitely gonna have to go in for skin grafts or something—and gets him hopped up on morphine, while another tries to rub the tenseness out of Zizou’s muscles and tries to get the blood out his fur (Jesus, the blood and now there is no way Dean can pretend this is anything other than what it was; murder, albeit in self-defense). Sam and Nikita get icepacks and cream for their bruises, and someone brings Sam a little packet of saltines and a cup of water to wash the taste of vomit away. One of the EMTs comes back with containers of meat for both dæmons. Nikita nibbles shyly and Zizou ignores his completely.

No one says anything about the three bullies, but Dean saw them wheel the biggest one away on a gurney, solemnly. Another ambulance leaves with the other two boys and their demons, sirens blaring as it speeds away. Critical condition, Dean hears over the radio.

John, who’d turned up about half an hour after the EMTs, rubs a hand over his face. And that makes Dean feel about a million times worse, because he knows that if charges had been pressed, they would’ve had to have pulled a Houdini and laid low for a few months. John sighs, explosively, and both Dean and Sam duck their heads.

“Dean,” he grouses, “What the hell were you thinkin’?”

“I was thinkin’,” Dean retorts, and he is _so_ blaming this on the drugs later, “about savin’ Sammy.”

John finally turns to Sam, who is curled up pathetically in the back of the ambulance, on the other side of the EMT, who is doing his best to act indifferent. But Dean can totally see the asshole hiding a smirk at Dean’s snappy response. Nikita has squirmed her way under Zizou’s paws, ears flat and eyes huge. John sighs, and Dean takes it as a “go on”.

The EMT motions for the principal and the other adults milling about to come over.

“The mutt had Nikita on the ground, pinned. And it wasn’t nothin’ friendly, cos those three assholes were pushin’ Sammy around too,” Dean starts, and Zizou rumbles loudly behind him, “We were walkin’ away. Me and Zizou, we shoved ‘em off, but we weren’t about to fight some gradeschoolers, so we walked off. The dogs got me in the backs of the legs. Zizou went for the kids. That’s all.”

One of the men, balding and huge, with an owl dæmon puffed up indignantly on his shoulder, fumes.

“My son is _dead_ because of you! If you think some bullshit story about him ‘bullying’ your little brother will—!”

“Dean’s not lying!” Sammy scowls at the same time that John spits, “Your son and his dæmon damn near took my son’s legs off! That ain’t _no_ kind of friendly action.”

“Dean,” Zizou says suddenly, grabbing the attention of everyone. His voice is low and rusty, and he’s looking at Dean with the saddest eyes he’s ever seen, “Dean, I can’t—”

Dean feels something heavy in the pit of his chest, something tight clenching and locking. Zizou’s form wavers for an instant, rippling, but he doesn’t change. Can’t change. If anything, his entire body looks fiercely beautiful in that moment.

“I’m sorry,” Zizou says desperately, ignoring the bewildered looks of the paramedics and the adults, but Dean just nods and grips Zizou’s ruff firmly. Dean figures he’s probably the only kid who wouldn’t want a huge powerful creature as a perpetual shadow.

He wonders, absently, how they’re all supposed to fit in the Impala now.

* * *

John and Sam butt heads over every-goddamn-thing that can be argued over. Frankly, it’s fucking ridiculous, but both of them stopped listening to Dean’s objections a long time ago. He keeps mostly to himself and Zizou, and whenever they start to fight— _really_ fight, as in two seconds away from trading blows—they step in, break it up, and then leave.

John only manages to actually hit Sam once.

It happens like this:

The time in which Sammy’s found out about hunting has long since passed. He knows about the supernatural, and hunts it with them—with John and Dean—now. That’s not what it's about. Sam knows the difference between good things and bad things, and knows that the things they hunt are mostly bad. Sam doesn’t mind hunting, not since John’s actually started to let him do shit other than research and stay behind in the Impala. That’s not even it.

Sam’s problem is time. He wants to know how long John plans to keep up with the game.

Sam doesn’t remember Mary, and neither does Nikita, but Dean and Zizou and the man who used to be John Winchester do. John especially. John’s tried to explain it to Dean a few times, the demon that they’re hunting. The one who killed Mary and changed everything. The demon with the yellow eyes. John’s told Sam the same, but Sam doesn’t get it. Or maybe he gets it too well.

“I don’t see why we can’t stop hunting! Most of the shit we hunt has nothing to do with the Yellow Eyed Demon!”

John’s look says Sam had damn well better watch his language, or John’d watch it for him, and he snaps out, “You just want us to leave these things running around?”

Sam scoffs.

Dean and Zizou are on the couch, curled on and around each other, as much as a young man and an over-sized tiger can curl up on a shitty motel couch. Nikita is a rumbling honey bear half a step behind Sam, glaring at their father.

“I didn’t say that! But why can’t we just kill this demon and be done with it?"

“There is no ‘done’ with it, Sam! This is for your mother!”

And then Sam:

“I don’t _have_ a mother! I don’t remember _anything_ about Mary Winchester, and I’m not about to waste my entire life chasing down some, some psychotic _thing_ from Hell, all because she burned up on the ceiling!”

John hits Sam straight across the face.

It’s the only hit he gets off though, because before he can even draw his arm back, Nikita—as a fucking hissing _crocodile_ that seems impossibly huge on the hotel floor—nearly take his leg off.

John stomps into one of the bedrooms, and the lock slides into place. Sam and Nikita leave.

Dean follows.

* * *

Four months later, Nikita is still a croc, and it’s getting a little out of hand. Years ago, John’d bought a truck, and now he rides in that by himself. Zizou and Nikita crowd into the backseat of the Impala. And yeah, it’s a classic car, so it’s plenty roomy, but big enough for a goddamned crocodile and an overgrown tiger? Not really.

John and Sam still aren’t talking to each other, and Dean is stuck doing the awkward mediating thing that he’s sick and tired of doing. Zizou’s fur has started to bleach silver along his spine from stress.

(Dean sneaks out before sunrise and they go sleep in old junkyards or on the roof of the Impala, parked in some empty lot. Hours later, they buck up and trudge back to the room to break up the inevitable morning argument)

Dean doesn’t think that John’s been anything like sober for three weeks, and Sam will only talk directly to Dean.

He hates it.

* * *

When Sam leaves for Stanford, Dean dies a little on the inside.

Nikita, who moves with far more speed than a cold-blooded creature of here size should be able to, is at Sam’s feet, shifting in agitation. Sam has stone-cold determination etched onto his face, gripping the straps of his duffel tightly.

“I’m going,” He says over and over, deaf to Dean’s pleas.

("If you go," John had sneered, "Don't you come back.")

“Sammy,” Dean tries, and he can feel the cold grip of something clutching and compressing his lungs, because _his family is falling apart_.

“No, Dean,” Sam insists, and Dean fucking hates the pride warring with his anguish, “I’m going. They’re giving me a full ride, and I’m tired of hunting.”

Nikita is bobbing her head in agreement, hissing lowly. This—Sam not just leaving, but leaving _Dean_ —he can’t handle it. John is holed up in the bedroom, fuming and nursing a wounded pride. Dean can feel it, this horror, this misery, crawling up the back of his throat, and he turns his head from Sam the slightest bit.

Sam hikes the duffel higher up and Nikita starts to shoot out the hotel room door.

“Sammy,” Zizou calls, his voice wrecked from disuse. Both Sam and Nikita freeze dead in their tracks, so unused to Dean’s dæmon speaking. When Sam turns around, his face is pale.

Dean doesn’t meet his eyes.

“Sammy, _please_ ,” Zizou sobs, leaning heavily into Sam’s tense frame. Nikita is suddenly at Dean’s feet, managing to twine around him as she hisses uncertainly.

Sam’s hand falls to Zizou’s head, grasping at sun washed fur. Nikita raises her snout into the air, until the tip of it fits into the snug curve of Dean’s limp palm. This is them, Dean thinks desperately, all they’ve ever been: too much uncertainty and too little of everything else.

“Sorry, Dean,” Nikita hisses, fitting her chin more snugly into the palm of Dean’s hand. It sounds like _I’m sorry_ and _goodbye_ and all the things they’ll never say to each other, because that’s all they know.

Looking back, Dean can see it, the moment Sam’s resolve strengthens. His fingers clutch the top of Zizou’s head and the tiger rumbles brokenly, resigned. It takes Dean a moment more.

Nikita’s snout leaves his palm, and she’s slithering out into the night, albino scales reflecting the streetlights beautifically.

“Sammy, no,” Dean surges forward and grab’s at Sam’s arms, can feel his heart beating itself to pieces, “I’ll talk to Dad, we can move west coast and you can go to school, you don’t have to hunt if you don’t want to just—”

“Sammy…” Zizou mumbles, butting his head into Sam’s hands, which remain unresponsive, unfeeling.

“It’s Sam,” He says, quickly and resigned. The door slams behind him.

Dean falls onto the couch, and then falls apart.

* * *

Dean is technically-not-in Palo Alto, clearing out some poltergeists and not-so-subtly checking up on Sam when he learns that Nikita is a No-Form.

The last he saw of them, Nikita was a crocodile and Sam was still baby-faced. When he and Zizou spot them, striding across the quad, they’ve both slimmed down but Nikita’s—

Well, she’s a fox again.

Zizou growls softly, curiously from the back of his throat, and his tail thwaps against the Impala’s upholstery.

“Yeah, I know,” Dean mutters in reply, hunkering down in the driver’s seat, “I thought she’d settled, too.”

Sam is walking with two other people; a blonde girl with an Irish Wolfhound dæmon and a blond guy with a huge python hanging off him. The wolfhound and Nikita are walking in step, with Nikita occasionally making playful swipes at the wolfhound’s side.

Zizou whines and shifts awkwardly. Dean catches himself shifting in turn, and scowls.

“We can’t,” he insists, gripping white fur between his fingers. He’s talking to himself as much as he is his dæmon.

“We’ll… we’ll see him again,” Dean tries to comfort, starting the Impala. On the quad, Nikita’s ears perk up in recognition as the engine turns over, and her gait falters for a second.

Zizou doesn’t even bother to call him on his lie as they pull away.

* * *

It turns out not to be a lie, but Dean’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Dean breaks into Sam’s apartment with ease. He knows that Sam’s not in the business anymore, but he still has to stifle his disappointment when he manages to get in, snag a beer from the fridge and poke around a little before there’s any sign of movement from what he assumes is the bedroom.

Zizou is tucked away in the shadows, waiting for Nikita.

Dean hears a floorboard creak behind him, and he takes another swig of beer. Depending on Sam’s mood, it might be relatively easy to get him to come along. Dad’s been missing for weeks now, closer to a month, but he knows that there’s very little affection lost between Sam and John.

Sam attacks.

It’s a good enough fight, Dean decides, for someone who probably hasn’t been practicing. But Sam is sloppy and overconfident, and it’s not that hard to land one or two blows that make Sam gasp in sharp pain.

“Who the hell are you,” Sam snaps, throwing a punch that Dean easily blocks and counters. Sam lets out an oof of surprise.

Nikita comes barreling in, in the shape of a huge white tiger. Dean takes a moment to bask in the flattery. Zizou leaps from his place in the shadows and pins Nikita right as Dean lets Sam get the drop on him.

“Heya Sammy,” he grins, watching Sam’s hands falter.

“Dean?” Sam is practically yelling at this point.

Nikita falls out of tiger skin and back into fox fur and squirms from underneath Zizou.

“Zizou!” she yips, launching herself at his face.

“Sam?” it’s the wolfhound Dean saw before, followed closely by the girl. He’s got a deeper voice than Dean expected, but his tone is calm and only barely concerned, “What’s going on?”

Sam scrambles up, his wide eyes never leaving Dean.

“Do you know him?” the girl asks softly, as Nikita leads Zizou over to the Wolfhound and the two sniff at each other cautiously.

“Uhm, yeah, yeah—this is Dean,” Sam stumbles over his own words, his eyes darting between Dean and Zizou like they’re going to disappear. Which Dean finds bitterly ironic, considering the facts.

“Your brother Dean?” the girl prompts and Sam nods stupidly.

The Wolfhound tries to position himself between Nikita and Zizou and barely dodges a quick snap from an irate tiger. The girl flinches when her dæmon yelps in surprise and Zizou rumbles in warning.

“Uhm, yeah,” Sam reiterates forcefully, throwing Zizou a pointed glare that goes largely ignored, “Dean, my big brother. Dean, this is Jess.”

“Can I talk to you?” Dean gestures behind him, _we need to talk, no civvies_.

Sam, and sometimes Dean swears he does it just be a contrary little shit, only wraps an arm around the girl—Jess—and frowns.

 _Whatever you have to say, you can say it to the both of us_ , Sam’s silence is saying, _I’m not letting you make me choose_.

 _Goddamnit Sam_ , Dean tries to convey, _you are such a little bitch_.

Sam tightens his grip around Jess. For fuck’s sake—

“Dad’s on a hunting trip,” Dean bites out, just to see the color wash from Sam’s face, “And he hasn’t been home in a few days.”

* * *

And then the day comes where Dean starts to question everything he’s ever known.

He wakes up, only he doesn’t. His body is on a hospital bed, hooked up to wires and breathing tubes and completely unresponsive. Zizou’s awake, but silent. And he can’t hear Dean.

And Dean’s a tiger.

He looks much the same as Zizou does, huge and white, with eyes like anti-freeze and fur lined with silver in some spots. No one can see him, though, or hear him except for Tessa, who looks like a jackal with the flickering image of a pretty young woman flickering over her at random intervals.

Dean wonders if that’s how he looks; this terribly sad creature with an equally sad man superimposed over it.

He and Tessa prowl all over the hospital, chasing after some life-sucking hellghost that Dean roars at—with Juris’ roar, his mother’s roar—to scare it off. He’s pointedly not thinking about how his body is lying on a bed, wasting away, and Zizou wasting away beside it.

John and Nikita and Sam are all crowded in one room, John confined to a bed the same as Dean, but far less injured.

Dean’s going to die.

He can read it in the line of Sam’s shoulders, the weight of John’s face as he stares off at nothing, the fury in Nikita as she lashes her tail back and forth and hisses at everything and nothing.

Dean decides that he’ll make peace, if this is the way it has to be. He knows he’s had a decent run, done more than most hunters, let alone most people.

And then Sam brings back an Ouija board.

It’s pretty hard to navigate with claws, but Dean manages well enough.

* * *

**interlude: zizou**

* * *

No one can live without their dæmon, not really. It’s just a fact of life. People have dæmons, and that’s what makes them human.

Ghosts and demons and the like don’t have dæmons, or they drag these malformed half-mad creatures around with them in the afterlife, beasts one would hesitate to call representations of any soul.

Zizou can’t explain John Winchester. The night that Mary died, he’d come out of the smoking skeleton of their house, with no Caroline at his heels.

They—he and Dean—had always assumed something had broken that night, something that allowed John to escape with his life, but not much else.

Watching John now, as he hobbles out of his room, Zizou isn’t sure what pushes him to move, but does. Sam and Nikita are gone, and John is whispering to himself, low and confident.

Zizou follows John—the father of his human, and something of his father as well, as much as a man can father a dæmon—down to the basement, watching as the man pulls supply after supply from the duffel Sam had brought from Bobby.

“It’s almost over,” John murmurs, laying down chalk lines.

And then Zizou hears it; a voice rising in response, “Yes, almost. And then it will be up to them.”

The fur along Zizou’s spine raises and he bites back on the hiss that wants to escape. He knows John has no dæmon, not any longer. So who could respond to him?

John answers for him, reaching into his pocket and pulling a scorpion from it. It’s small, and all the more deadly for it, Zizou rationalizes, watching John place the scorpion on his shoulder. And even though it’s impossible, Zizou can now smell the familiar tang and twist, and knows that the scorpion is Caroline.

Even though it’s nigh impossible for a dæmon to change forms once they’ve settled, he can feel it in his bones, he _knows_ it’s Caroline.

Just as he knows that the man in the basement, the one who is not John, is not a man at all.

* * *

Dæmons aren’t meant to keep secrets, least of all from their humans, but Zizou knows that the Winchesters couldn’t be normal if they tried, and it goes double for their dæmons; Zizou who is too too big and Nikita, a no-form. Caroline, who _changed_.

But even so, watching John with his haggard eyes and knowing, about Caroline and the Yellow Eyed Demon and the deal; watching and knowing and not saying anything to Sam or Nikita or whispering into Dean’s ear, it feels sticky in his chest.

 _I have to trust in myself_ , Zizou resolves, _I have to trust that I **know**_.

* * *

It is only later, catching the glimpse of John falling from his bed and knowing that he won’t rise, watching Sam and Nikita yell, furious and hurt and so many other unsaid things, that Zizou realizes that he and Dean don’t know much at all.

* * *

**end interlude: zizou**

* * *

Dean's managed to fool Bobby and Elsa, but he's only going to have one shot at this.

Zizou growls, but it's a sad, broken thing. He's staring at Sam's body—at _Sam_ as though he can will Nikita back into corporeality. 

"He won't forgive us for this," Zizou's voice is a rasp, something more suited to a snake or something poisonous. 

"He's never going to know," Dean answers, just as low. They don't look at each other.

Dean goes to the Impala, grabs what he needs and turns stiffly for the crossroads. Zizou doesn't follow, but doesn't stop him either.

Dean pretends the tightening in his chest is just the stitch in his side.

* * *

Bobby and Elsa are wearing twin frowns and glares, but Dean doesn't say anything and Zizou isn't talking. Dean's not even entirely sure his dæmon had spoken before, and that it wasn't his subconscious trying to guilt him out of something that needed to be done.

Sam doesn't need to know. He shouldn't.

(which, par for course where Dean's luck is concerned, means he's guaranteed to find out)

* * *

Before they go to face Lilith—before Dean’s deal comes due—Dean grips the fur at the back of Zizou’s neck tightly and gives Sam a shaky smile. Sam breaks into a sob, and wrenches Dean into a hug. Nikita launches herself at Zizou, nuzzling like crazy.

On some unspoken cue, they break apart, and Nikita leaps at Dean’s chest while Zizou rears up on his hind legs and sets his huge forelimbs on Sam’s shoulders. Dean hugs Nikita close, and Zizou does the same to Sam, holding him still and rubbing his face along Sam’s.

An hour later, Sam is pressed up hard against a wall, Dean is on a table struggling to pull air into his lungs, and Lilith is giving them a huge rictus grin from inside Ruby’s meatsuit. Hellhounds are baying from outside the small dining room they’re trapped in.

Lilith opens the door.

When the hellhounds come, Zizou roars, a roar Dean’s ever only heard from one other dæmon: it’s Juris’ roar, one that shakes the windows in their panes, and more than one of the hellhounds yips in nervousness. But then one of them snags the leg of Dean’s jeans and he goes tumbling to the floor and it’s all over.

“Have fun,” Lilith grins, and Zizou lets out a yowl of pain as the hellhounds attack.

Dean’s always hated dogs.

Dean can feel them, tearing at him and Zizou both. There’s blood, and sharp fangs easily piercing his flesh. Zizou is struggling weakly, swatting as many hellhounds as he can with his huge paws. One of the hellhounds gets in a lucky shot, sinking its fangs as deep as it can into Zizou’s forepaw. Zizou falters, Dean screams.

Dean dies.

* * *

In Hell, a demon named Alastair teaches him that no matter how strong he thinks he is, it’ll never be enough.

* * *

In Hell, a demon named Alastair tells him that the pain will stop if Dean is willing to pass the torch, so to speak. Alastair croons at him, caresses Dean’s face with oily fingers. _Think of your pretty pretty dæmon, Dean-o_ , Alastair will always say.

And Dean will think of Zizou, who he hasn’t seen since right before he died. There’s a hollow, gaping wound in his chest, where Zizou should be, but Zizou’s not here. Alastair tells him it’s because dæmons are tortured in their own special Hell, by other dæmons.

Once, when Dean manages to escape the rack and make it miles away in the endless maze of damnation before they catch him, he hears the agonized cries of animals, and he starts to believe it.

* * *

In Hell, Dean starts to lose himself and a demon named Alastair calls him good and right. Alastair tells him that time passes differently in Hell, that it’s been a little over a decade here, but barely a month topside. Alastair tells him that he’s doing so good, so much more determined than his daddy.

 _John didn’t break at all but that’s because he was already all kinds of broken when he got here_ , Alastair murmurs, gripping Dean’s jaw and watching him struggle, _It’s so much more fun to watch you fall to pieces, my dear_.

Alastair tells him that all Dean has to do is save his own skin; be the predator, not the prey. Alastair tells him that he’s something special, something brilliant.

 _I know you’ve got it in you, kid_ , Alastair tells him, tipping Dean’s chin up with a sharp nailed finger, _Don’t think of your daddy or your brother. Do something for **you** for once, Dean-o_.

It takes 20 more odd years for the words to sink in and stick, cloying and irrefutable. But they do stick, eventually. Inevitably.

Dean takes the hand Alastair offers him, and steps off the rack.

(10 years later, an angel comes for him)

* * *

When Dean crawls out of his own grave, it’s sunny and beautiful out. And an entire forest is leveled around his gravesite.

Dean is gasping and covered in grave soil, but the sky is clear and the sun is bright. Not exactly unwelcome, considering that every time he blinks, he sees slick red instead of black, hears screams and smells sulfur. With that little reminder of Hell that comes with every breath he takes, every blink, every move, he could use a little sunshine. His life feels like it’s been leveled; he feels like he’s been leveled. It’s fitting.

When Dean crawls out of his grave, back from Hell and lookin’ brand spankin’ new, it takes him 20 minutes to notice that something’s wrong. Everything is stiff, but nothing’s missing; his muscles are new and tender, but still defined. The scars from his hunts, all the little nicks and bruises all over his torso and legs, from killing evil sons of bitches, are all gone. Everything is new, smooth.

He’s aged damn near 42 years in the Pit, but he feels and looks like he just hit his 20s again.

Dean falls to his knees, tucks his head and tries to pull in deep breaths. He’s choking, gagging on bile, because everything feels _fine_. Every time he blinks, in that split second, he’s back in the Pit with a knife in his hands and a body on the rack but he feels **fine**.

“Zizou,” he calls hoarsely, hoping even though he saw his dæmon fall away into golden dust, even though he never once saw Zizou in Hell. He was dead, and if Zizou was back just as he was, where was he? All around him, it’s quiet for miles. He should be in a world of pain because Zizou is gone, but everything feels _fine_.

Everything is fine.

He feels like he’s going to crawl out of his own skin and maybe then he’ll be able to look himself in the mirror and not feel a soul on the rack writhing beneath him.

He’s going to claw his own skin off and scream until he’s raw and until nothing is fucking **_fine_**.

“ _Zizou!_ ”

(There is no answer, and eventually, he picks himself up. Everybody he’s ever loved has left him behind, so why should this be any different?)

* * *

On his way to somewhere that’s not bumfuck nowhere, he comes across a fill-up station. It’s empty of personnel or customers, but there’s food and water and a chance to get out of the sun.

After draining two and half bottles of water, he goes into the backroom and sticks his head under the faucet. The water is tepid, but clear, so it doesn’t even matter. He just wants to feel clean, despite knowing that it won’t do shit. He checks out his torso again, smooth skin where there should be scars.

There’s also a handprint burned deep into the flesh of his left arm. It’s square and angled, and it feels powerful when Dean traces it with a shaking finger.

 _You were in Hell_ , he thinks to himself, _and now you’re not_.

What the fuck had Sam done?

When Dean turns to leave the backroom—check the shelves for food, find a bag of some sort, maybe raid the register—something huge and white barrels into him, knocks him flat on his ass.

“ _Dean_ ,” Zizou sobs, leaning onto him heavily, huge paws on Dean’s shoulders.

“…Zizou?” Dean manages, disbelieving. But he knows these stripes, and this fur, and so he hugs back tightly, “Where were you? I thought you weren’t coming back…”

Zizou’s huge head bumps Dean’s gently, fur warm on his face. He looks the same, if a little older, a little more tired. And there’s smears of blood orange fur on his upper left foreleg, in the same place as Dean’s handprint, almost as though the fires of Hell had burned some colour into him.

“I woke up down the road. All the trees were fallen over. I didn’t know where you were, I couldn’t feel you,” Zizou rumbles, holding Dean as best he can, “Stumbled across your scent two miles out.”

Dean pulls back in shock and realization.

“There’s no pull,” Dean says, framing Zizou’s face with his hands. On Dean’s gesture, the tiger pads backwards through the threshold of the backroom, and then further back, out the door and to the abandoned car at the pump. They regard each other, neither in any sort of pain, “How is there no pull?”

“It could be useful on hunts,” Zizou suggests, rather than answering. It’s a deflection, an easy out, and Dean will damn well take it. Dean opens his mouth to agree—

—and the entire store begins to shake.

* * *

When Dean becomes aware again he’s on the floor, with Zizou draped over him.

There’s glass everywhere; the windows and mirrors blown out, every glass bottle and container is shattered.

Both of their ears are bleeding.

“What the hell—?” Dean says, pushing himself upright.

Zizou is staring upwards, eyes bright.

“It was a voice,” he says, awe-struck, “A voice like a thousand melodies.”

* * *

Bobby hangs up on him twice, threatens to kill him once and then actually tries to run Dean through with a silver dagger when he and Zizou finally make their way to his place.

“Bobby, Bobby whoa,” Dean tries to placate, but Bobby’s having none of it. Dean ducks under an upward swing of the dagger, and falls backwards over a chair. He regrets telling Zizou to scope out the yard and garage for any sign of Sam while he talked to Bobby.

“What the hell are you,” Bobby growls, and at his side, Elsa is snarling too.

“Bobby, it’s me,” Dean tries again, but, if anything, Bobby glares harder and then Elsa leaps for his throat.

That, of course, is when Zizou shows up.

The two dæmons slam into each other, Elsa yelping at the unexpected contact. Despite being a good five times as large, Zizou manages to deflect Elsa without unnecessarily hurting her or Bobby. When Elsa regains her bearings and looks to attack again, Zizou stands his ground and roars (it used to be Juris’ roar, Mary’s roar, but it’s theirs now).

Dean has never seen Bobby look so gob-smacked in his life.

“Dean?” he whispers, looking for all the world as though he’s going to cry. Dean can feel his throat tightening.

“Yeah,” he says, because it’s all he can say.

Bobby pulls him into a hug, the kind of hug that he would’ve never gotten from John, the kind that says _it’s been too long_ and _I’m glad you’re back_ and _we never stopped trying to get you back, not once_.

(and for a moment, Dean almost pulls away, because fuck, how long has it been since he’s felt touch that wasn’t coupled with Alastair crooning in his ear as he cut deeper and longer and deeper—)

“Zizou,” Elsa says, her eyes crinkling up as she grins doggishly. Zizou rumbles low in his throat and nudges her playfully.

* * *

Something that looks like a man strides into the barn, uncaring of the sparks and embers that rain down as the lights blow out, one by one. The creature at the man’s side is unlike anything Dean’s ever seen before, feathers and fur, a long lupine snout and huge shifting wings. He and Bobby pump both of them full of shotgun rounds, but neither one so much as winces. The two of them walk past wards for deities, lesser gods, demons, deterrents for ghosts and tulpas and shapeshifters and rougarous without so much as a second glance. They walk past everything. Zizou shifts warily and Elsa whines low in her throat. Dean buries a knife in the guy’s chest. 

The creature settles its wings and fixes him with an unimpressed stare.

The man reaches up and slides the knife out, easy as you please.

“We need to talk,” the not-man says, and before Dean knows what’s what, Bobby and Elsa are slumping to the ground, “Alone.”

“Who are you?” Dean growls, from Bobby’s side. The older man is breathing, just unconscious.

“Castiel,” the man says, turning the knife Dean sank into his chest over and over in curious hands. The creature at his feet shifts, and he glances at it, “And this is Khamisi.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Dean says dismissively, “Now what are you?”

Castiel looks up, and pins Dean with an inquisitive stare. Khamisi—and seriously, what the fuck _is_ that?—slinks closer to Zizou, heedless of the warning snarls.

“I am an Angel of the Lord.”

Khamisi uses the moment of abrupt shock to bump noses with Zizou. The tiger rears back, tail flicking uncertainly. Dean barely stops himself from gaping. In his defense, there are a lot of things to gape at.

“Bullshit. There’s no such thing.”

Both Castiel and Khamisi tilt their heads at sharp angles of confusion. This time, it’s Khamisi who speaks.

“That’s your problem Dean; you have no faith,” and then Dean knows nothing but wings. They’re just shadows, silhouettes really, but Dean thinks they are the most beautiful wings that he’s ever seen. Khamisi's voice is melodious—multi-layered, even—and nowhere near the baritone gravel of Castiel's voice. It almost hurts to listen to.

It is, Dean has to admit, some next level witchcraft fuckery.

Castiel’s head is still canted to the side, and Khamisi is peering up at Zizou, absently flexing wings.

“You don’t think you deserve to be saved.” Said with an air of abstract wonder and consideration.

“Good things _do_ happen, Dean.” Said so earnestly that Dean almost believes it.

Almost.

**Author's Note:**

> you don't need to know much of anything about the _his dark materials_ trilogy, but both Sam and Dean have unusual dæmons; Dean because dæmons are usually the opposite sex of their humans and Sam because dæmons that don't settle are very rare.
> 
> in the HDM 'verse, it's also unusual for dæmons to be large predators but I figured that intimidating dæmons would be par for course in Supernatural.
> 
> It's also uncommon for dæmons to touch each other unless the people in question are close in the HDM 'verse but, dæmon on dæmon violence would be pretty common in a universe where people could be possessed or otherwise aggrieved by malicious spirits.
> 
> the only dæmon with a symbolic name is khamisi, which means "born on thursday" in swahili. juris is the name of a hume ninja (with a sweet dual wield) in my _final fantasy tactic advance_ clan and zizou is, in fact, the nickname of footballer zinedine zidane and has absolutely nothing to do with supernatural or this fic.


End file.
